Parts Of It Are Very Rough And Ridgy, Jammed Together Like Field Ice, Or Compacted By Rolls Of Lava Which May Have Swelled Up From Beneath, But The Largest Part Of The Area Presents The Appearance Of Huge Coiled Hawsers, The Ropy Formation Of The Lava Rendering The Illusion Almost Perfect.

These are riven by deep cracks which emit hot sulphurous vapours.

Strange to say, in one of these, deep down in that black and awful region, three slender metamorphosed ferns were growing, three exquisite forms, the fragile heralds of the great forest of vegetation, which probably in coming years will clothe this pit with beauty. Truly they seemed to speak of the love of God. On our right there was a precipitous ledge, and a recent flow of lava had poured over it, cooling as it fell into columnar shapes as symmetrical as those of Staffa. It took us a full hour to cross this deep depression, and as long to master a steep hot ascent of about 400 feet, formed by a recent lava-flow from Hale-mau-mau into the basin. This lava hill is an extraordinary sight - a flood of molten stone, solidifying as it ran down the declivity, forming arrested waves, streams, eddies, gigantic convolutions, forms of snakes, stems of trees, gnarled roots, crooked water-pipes, all involved and contorted on a gigantic scale, a wilderness of force and dread. Over one steeper place the lava had run in a fiery cascade about 100 feet wide.

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